Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Indian media in developed countries need to wake up:Time to remind India of its weaknesses and faults

Indian media
in developed countries need to wake up: Time to remind India of its weaknesses and faults

Indian media in developed countries need to stand-up, shed undeserving patriotism, blinkered loyalty and nationalistic bias and become a medium of change for the better of the once proud and respected nation.

Fiji Pundit,
in its media watch role reviews changing view of Indian media in Auckland, in
particular Indian Newslink and its conservative
editor Venkat Raman. Today we analyse its latest editorial on treatment of
women in India.

Indian women need to unite, rise, and fight back male chauvinism in India, in form of Shakti

Indian Newslink's editor and the paper was seen by some sections of the community as a
friend of NZ Labour party and apparently a spin doctor and public –relations arm
of the Indian High Commission and Indian Government. Venkat became a self-appointed
gatekeeper to filter and shut out the bad news of India from NZ public. He even
went to the extent of censoring and editing out opinion pieces to show them in
good light if something critical was written about his Bharat Mata, Mother
India. This came to a head when the comments of yours truly (Thakur) about India on
Facebook posting on Independence Day 2012 was misinterpreted and publicized by
his friend and Labour Party apprentice politician and MP-aspirant, Sunny
Kaushal, and well-supported in agenda-setting character assassination by this
veteran editor. [Read: http://fijipundit.blogspot.com/2012/12/mera-bharat-mahaan-thakurs-offending.html

Is Bharat Mata, as an epitome of a woman, is being disrobed by Indians today?

However, a pleasant and surprising change appears to have come to this
supposedly veteran editor Venkat Raman. Despite the Indian lynch-mob calling me
a refugee, uneducated Fijian and a failed journalist writing without research,
it appears my articles on Fiji Pundit pricked
his conscience and awoken the journalist in a blindly patriotic and
nationalistic editor. [Read:http://fijipundit.blogspot.com/2012/12/cry-beloved-india-rise-indians-rise.html

If one read his editorial of 15 January, 2013, one would wonder whether
it is Venkat Raman or Thakur Ranjit Singh talking the truth about India.

“Corruption in high and low
places, arrest of ministers and top officials and violence against women have
placed the country in bad light….

But how and why did India
degenerate into such a pathetic state of international ridicule and a system
that appears to have failed at every stage of its execution? Why did the
people, known for their political acumen and democratic values, elect and
suffer mediocre or even substandard lawmakers?”

Bharat Mata -Our India is still a great nation of great people. Are we keeping its pride as its past leaders did?

Who will he now apologise for degrading his Bharat Mata, as I was
accused and punished and directed to apologise to some conceited and blinkered
Auckland Indian leaders who wished to keep us in dark about real happenings in
India? But then the nationalist and Indian patriot took the better of this
veteran journalist when he became an apologist for what is happening, blaming
it on a minority.“We know that just a few
thousand rowdies and despicable miscreants can create chaos in a land of
billion plus people. But these are like a drop of poison that can desecrate a
barrel of milk, just as a single cancer cell can destroy the entire body.”

Agreed, we have minorities in other countries committing crime, but
nowhere is discrimination and atrocities against women as institutionalized as in
India.

Despite being a
country, “which has accorded women pride
of place and honour as President, Prime Minister, Parliamentary Speaker, Leader
of the Opposition, diplomats, leaders and captains of industry and as
successful and leading entrepreneurs,” it appears majority of Indian women
are still treated as paon ki juti (slippers
on our feet) bereft of dignity and honour preached in scriptures and mythologies
only, not in reality.. To a great extent some outdated shackles and stereotypes
of women, preached by a Brahmin and male dominated Hinduism is to blame for
this low status of women in 80% Hindu India because dignity and respect for
women preached in scriptures, epics and mythologies are inversely related to reality
of their downtrodden treatment there today. But that is another topic for Fiji Pundit to tackle.

Are women in India depicted as strong and respected only in epics, scriptures and mythologies?

Venkat ends his
editorial with some hope for the future:

“We hope that the young men and women, who have begun
a new age of intolerance towards political and corruption, sex offenders and
moral turpitude will not rest until the right things are done in the right way
in the right time.”

However, this hope
can only be realized if Indian editors, commentators and journalists in
developed countries (like New Zealand, Australia, UK, Canada and USA) can join their
chorus of objections against rottenness in Indian men, their governments and a
corrupt system. The blind loyalty and blinkered patriotism by NRI media people
to an undeserving, unfair and discriminatory system in India will not help this
hope become reality.

Hope Indian media in Auckland can digest this.

THAKUR RANJIT SINGH

Indian women need to unite, rise, and fight back male chauvinism in India